In the third year of the Republic of China, twenty-seven members of the "Smoke Cage Troupe" died overnight like puppets hanging from a beam. Only the adopted son of the troupe leader disappeared on a rainy night in the south of the Yangtze River with the secret technique of "smoking the soul".
A hundred years later, Lin Shu, a graduate student in folklore, stepped into Qiwu Town, shrouded in clouds and fog all year round, to investigate this unsolved case. When he pushed open the wooden door of "Jingxianzhai", he met the man in a plain shirt with light crimson tobacco wrapped around his fingertips - Gu Jingxian.
As the investigation deepens, the strangeness becomes more intense: the eyes of the townspeople are as empty as puppets after dark, no one sings "Smoke Cage Song" on the abandoned stage, and the jade pendant Lin Shu carries is exactly the same as the one worn by the missing boy a hundred years ago. When Gu Jingxian used tobacco as a blade to save him from the evil ghost, and when the broken pages of ancient books revealed the cruel truth of "raising silk with souls", Lin Shucai was shocked -
This century-old fog has been trapped for him.
The truth he pursues is a reunion that has been carefully prepared for a hundred years.
Everyone in Qiwu Town lives in a cage of smoke, but he is the "finishing touch" that Gu Jingxian is waiting for.
The entanglement of tobacco becomes both a cage and a fetter. When gentle control meets sobriety and reason, and the fetters of the present life collide with the will of this life, Lin Shu must choose: sink into this hazy cage of fate, or cut off the thread, even if the fog clears, there will be no place to return.
